Naomi Klein: Neoliberalism is to blame ...

[quaker bill]

7. true

It is really pretty simple stuff. The neo-liberal plan was never going to work, but worse, only the problem making portions of the plan were ever implemented.

Deregulating trade caused accelerated economic restructuring. Manufacturing jobs turned into service sector jobs.

Deregulating banks caused massive fraud, asset bubbles, and financial collapse.

Some of these impacts could have been minimized, but this required the NeoLibs to keep control of congress, which they promptly lost to the conservatives.

Bill Clinton raised the minimum wage once, then congress was gone. Had they been able to keep raising the minimum then the transition to the service sector would have had smaller socioeconomic impacts.

The plan to educate and train our way out of free trade impacts was a pipe dream in essence. However this was made far worse by the Republican education deform initiatives, which simply cut funds and pushed the non-performing "for profit" model.

Sensible regulations could have been enacted after the tech bubble, but with GWB in the WH and reps controlling Capitol Hill, we got less than nothing.

24 years on, Hillary ends up trying to sell a plan that is in fact a massive failure on many dimensions. Was it the neo-lib plan or the failure to implement it? I think it was both. Had it been implemented, it still would have failed, just far less badly.